Now you're kidding me! When I believed in the caloric balance nonsense, I actually tried eating 1000 calories per day of only crap food (sugary stuff). I wasn't losing weight, but I was becoming really sick after a while.

My research into why I did not lose weight on 1000 calories per day led me here and then to the real science of human metabolism.

Now the picture is incredibly clear to me, just like 1 + 1 = 2. And it's really easy to spot the holes in people's arguments when you know how it really works. You also find that the more you know the less you know. You will come to that point eventually, if you're lucky.

Patrick

Man I would like to have so much insight into the past and extrapolate exactly what would happen! I can't even start to imagine how you do it. Wow!

Patrick

Our current nutritional mess started with a phrase like this.

Ancel Keys, the father of our degeneration, started his quest against heart disease with "I think...". If he had actually cross-correlated his data on saturated fat with data on fructose(sucrose), we would probably not be in this mess today. But no, he already thought he had the answer.

Ever since, no real scientific experiment ever managed to show that saturated fat by itself increases the risk of hearth disease. On the contrary, they only found out that it's actually beneficial and that PUFA vegetable oils and fructose(sucrose) are the causal agents.

Patrick

No offense or anything but what is the sense in eating a diet of pure sugar and junk? I'm not surprised you didn't lose weight. Your body likely retained water to deal with all the junk you were giving it. Were you surprised you felt sick? In any case, that would not be eating sugar moderately .

Moderation and common sense is the key.

Of course I was surprised ! My doc, my trainer and a friend nutritionist all told me that all I had to do was create a caloric deficit and that's all there was to it.

I was surprised to get sick yes. But then I started learning about our body deciding exactly what it does with the energy we intake. That it could store it even if the energy was needed elsewhere. That it would do everything it could to conserve it's current total energy, even by slowing down to match my new lower calorie intake. Etc...

I was surprised to find out how much complete and utter nonsense to conventional wisdom was. That even our doctors trusted said nonsense.

Yes I was surprised and I am still pissed about most of what we are being told. But at least I can see things changing nowadays. It's slow but we are getting there.

Patrick

I guess they probably should have added, "Now, Valtor, don't going eating nothing but junk food" .

Why wouldn't you try doing the 1000 calorie (though a little low) diet with a whole foods diet to test that theory? Surely you have heard at a minimum that sugar is bad for the teeth? I just don't get why you would choose toxic foods to do that.

I know someone who gains 5 lbs overnight when they eat chicken (they also don't feel well). Caloric increase? Insulin? Metabolism? No, they retain water as a symptom of intolerance to chicken. Probably a way for the body to maintain distance through dilution from the irritating component.

The addictive and driving nature of carbohydrates is IMO "why" McD et al started upsizing their food. If people were happy to pay for something of a given size, and they cannot charge twice as much for twice as much of something usually (prices usually scale less than that), then why would any corp be driven to increase portion size unless people wanted that?

I think the food intake drove fat storage and drove overeating which in turn drove the market to supply what they wanted.

Restaurants have vastly bigger portions in the USA than most countries, all you can eat buffets are huge, and as noted (here or elsewhere in my reading today, I'm lost!) even recipes reduced 'portion qty' over the years in cookbooks for the same recipe.

Society has been en masse changed by the food intake, which changes hormonal balance, brain chemistry, fat storage and more, and those changes drive more eating at fundamental cellular levels -- not something that everyone can just go, "Oh, ok, I'll just eat less, no problem." It becomes like completely denying and ignoring sexuality or something -- nobody can do it for long and people who try get neurotic and unhealthy and show up in their priest collars in the newspapers. Willpower will not outsmart basic biochemistry.

So eating plans in some cases are designed to help fix and heal the biochemistry so that willpower isn't even much of an issue anymore because a healthy body is not craving poisons and zigging wildly all over the blood sugar map. This is a basic fundamental of any sane control of "voluntary eating" and dismissing eating plans which have this necessary approach, while trying to substitute it all with simplistic one-liners (push-aways! eat less, move more!) is ... hang on I'm searching for a less than totally insulting adjective ... um, shortsighted.

Come on now. I tried that of course. And you do lose weight. BUT only temporary, because you also lose muscle with such a catabolic diet and slows down your metabolism.

The only way to lose excess weight for ever is to remove the causal agents (for ever) and eat when your body tells you to. If someone cannot lose excess weight it's because there is sill something in their diet or their metabolism that is part of their personal causal agents.

So the quest is different for all of us. But it's never about enforcing a calorie deficit. It's about making it so that your body can manage itself properly, then you will be naturally less hungry and eat less and a calorie deficit will ensue as a natural effect.

Patrick

If I read Taubes aright, "calorie deficit" (even as an effect of diet) is NOT the reason you lose weight (and more important, maintain a healthy weight), but rather working to heal and accommodate your hormonal situation, whatever it may be.

I agree completely.

I think you misunderstood my meaning. If your insulin is lower in between meals, your fat cells will be able to release more energy. If you add the extra energy released and made available plus what you intake, you would probably find that it matches your previous higher intake in energy. So your calorie intake would be lower as an effect, since your stored energy is able to contribute.

The equation would be:
Total Energy Change = (Intake + Released from fat cells) - Energy used.

So intake might be lower, but the total "energy in" stays the same. And you are losing weight in an anabolic state.

"Total Energy Change" might be zero, but you are losing weight nonetheless.

Patrick

Yes, I guess I did. Comes of dropping into the middle of a conversation. Sounds like you are talking about energy exchanges on the cellular level, rather than the old "calories in/calories out" thermodynamic model of overeating.

Back to our regularly-scheduled breakfast.

It's the same thing! I am in fact talking about the old "calories in/calories out" thermodynamic model of overeating. Except that the arrow of causality is reversed. Eating more and/or moving less is not the cause of obesity, but a symptom like any other diseases of civilization.

The mainstream "weight change = calories in - calories out" is true. But it does not tell us what makes the "calories in" variable increase. The mainstream thinks that it's just a choice you make to eat more and/or move less. We now know that it's your body (hormones) that tells you to eat (with hunger) and makes you lethargic (move less) when your body's cell needs energy. If we want to explain what made us become obese in the first place, then we have to go into the metabolic pathways and energy exchange. E.g.: if your body cannot use the energy stored right after a meal, you will have to compensate by eating more just to give the energy your cells require. You are gaining weight not because you eat more, but because your body does not make available all of your intake. So you are gaining weight not because you eat more, but you obviously had to eat more to gain weight. I hope this makes sense to everyone reading.

That's why I said that you will know when you have removed/corrected your causal agents. You will be less hungry because your body can finally use it's stored energy and "calories in" will really be lower. You truly are eating less calories, but as a consequence and not a forced act like the mainstream is asking of us.

Patrick

I swear I don't mean for this to come off as sarcastic, but Patrick, if you know so much about this, why do you keep switching plans?

Because of this part here "...you will know when you have removed/corrected your causal agents..."

My personal history doesn't change any of the facts and the more I learn the more I see how much there is to know. It's so overwhelming that you feel like you know nothing at all. It makes what the mainstream is parroting sound like very childish explanations of things.

So I concentrate on what I do know, on the abstracts. Because what might work for someone may not work for another. BUT what I wrote in my previous post is true for all of us. It's the best hypothesis there is at the moment on obesity. It explains everything and all observations on obesity. I think it's important that everyone know about this, because otherwise they cannot start their journey properly. This knowledge will help them on their quest. It will help them sort through all the nonsense left and right.

So I keep switching plans, because I need to find my causal agents. My temp is stuck in between 95.3 and 96.5 which is not normal at all and I still have not found the cause. Also, it looks like eating any carbs makes me gain fat or prevents me from losing. I've been from 337 to 227 and now I'm at 256. That is because I do not want to accept the facts for myself, about my own causal agents.

For my temp, it really looks like it might be my adrenals, but I'm not sure yet and there isn't much we can do about it, if that's what it is.

As for carbs, I guess I will have to accept that they are gone forever from my life. But I'm not quite there yet. I'm currently zero-carbs and of course this is perfect for me. But I still can't really see myself doing this forever and once truly adapted to ZC (six months), I would really have a problem with carbs. Because my body would have started producing less of the enzymes necessary to digest carbs.

So this is why I change plan often, but I believe my current plan (PaNu) has everything needed to teach everyone the basics of what they need to know in order to reach their health and weight control goals. PaNu is just fine with zero-carb, it's even ok with stuff like south-beach. I may change again in the future of course But for now, that's where it's at!

Patrick

PS: Change is good you know. If someone is always stuck on the same idea, it means they have stopped evolving, they have stopped getting better. I like being challenged, but my opponents must speak the same language (the language of science) and use the same definitions to describe the same things.